id not
favor the improvement of the river, refused to do so on account of a
narrow provincialism. Mr. Robinson showed them that New England is both
just and generous, and that the country is so united that a substantial
benefit to any portion of it cannot be an injury to another. He made
some keen thrusts at the Southern State rights advocates, who were so
eager for the old flag and an appropriation, and he reminded them that
whatever might be thought of the dogma of State sovereignty, "the great
old river is regardless of State lines, of the existence of Louisiana,
and, whenever there is a defective levee in Arkansas, over it goes into
Louisiana, spreading devastation in its course." Mr. Robinson insisted
that "Congress has no right to spend $4,000,000 out of the public
treasury immediately without investigating a theory and a plan which
proposes to render such an expenditure wholly unnecessary," and he
maintained that the greatest possible safe-guards should be provided
against any extravagant expenditure on the part of the Government. The
relations of New England to such an undertaking he thus broadly stated:

"I am not deterred by any considerations that when the great river is
open to commerce to an enlarged extent more freight will go down its
bosom and be diverted perhaps from the great cities on the Atlantic
shore. I am willing that the whole country shall be improved and opened
for its best and most profitable occupation. This territory, whose
interests are affected by this, is greater than the whole of New
England. I am not afraid that whatever improvements may be made there
New England will be left out in the cold. Whatever conduces to the
prosperity of the West or South will benefit the East and North. We are
parts of one great whole, and, if it is necessary under a proper policy
to spend some money from the Treasury of the United States to meet the
wants of those States lying along the Mississippi River, I hope it will
not be begrudged to them, but it should not be done, and the Government
should not be committed, until the plans, have received a careful
consideration and the indorsement of the proper officers."

At the third session of the Forty-fifth Congress, Mr. Robinson, from his
minor place on the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of
Justice, introduced a bill relative to the mileage of United States
Marshals, which proposed an important reform.

In the Forty-sixth Congress, at the first s